Fuck the protocol, here goes… , English

Usually, people are pretty shy about giving compliments and about saying nice things about others. I thought I’d change this today. I’ll start off with some backstory, though…

Back when I was younger I constantly felt like everything I did was wrong. Boy, that sentence made me sound old. Anyway. I felt like whatever task I tried, I failed miserably; and not only that, unlike people who knew how to smile and behave, I didn’t fail upwards. I was a shy motherfucker, and everything I ever tried or did ended in disaster. Now, while I intellectually can deduce that this wasn’t true it doesn’t really change the way it felt. From an early age people around me used their Huge Rubber Mallets of Truth to pound into my head the idea that I was a loser. Even if this wasn’t true from the beginning, with time I became one. I didn’t like to compete no matter what the game was, I shied away from excelling in anything just to avoid getting eyes on me so that people would focus in on me and my failure, and I avoided people as much as I could. Sure, I had friends that I felt comfortable with, but they were few and far between. Some of them I’m still in contact with, some I’ve lost along the way – that’s life. But I’d like to say a few words about three of them, my “oldest friends”, as it were.

First, there’s Erik. For all intents and purposes, he’s my kid brother. Him and his mom provided a safe haven for me when I was experiencing rough times, and I honestly believe I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for him. We’re incredibly alike in some ways (physically, we got singled out as brothers more than once), but we also differ a lot. I have changed a lot since I was younger, now I’m a outgoing and social bugger, and can handle interactions with almost anyone without even trying. While Erik doesn’t have the same problems I had in that department, he isn’t the outgoing kind of guy either. He’s sort of demure, unassuming and gentle, and with a sense of humor that can crack me up anytime. He’s fucking brilliant and can outwit me anytime he wants to. He was my best man at my wedding, and I wouldn’t want to live in a world without him.

Now… here comes the counterweight in our trio of friends. Anders. He’s the kind of guy I wanted to be when I was younger. He’s outgoing, good looking and a truly funny motherfucker. He’s incredibly easy to get along with, always up to no good (“No good” in this case usually meaning something that travels fast or generates adrenaline), and if I had to chose one person to bring with me to a desert island, it’d be Anders. He’d have the huts built and the BBQ up and running even before I’d have faced the fact that I’m not gonna be able to check my Facebook account. Incredibly enough, while being gifted with these things, he’s still very humble and unassuming, all at the same time as he’s also pretty fucking smart. He does have a tendency to speak without plugging in the brain now and then, but… that’s just a bonus for the rest of us.

The third person I’d like to mention is a guy I’ve known for a whole bunch of years. Robert. While in my younger years I didn’t really hang out a lot with him, we spoke a metric fuckton of bullshit online, and a sort of friendship developed through that. Bound together first and foremost (back then) by our common misanthropic raging rants about the declining state of the general populations intelligence and about religious people gone crazy (more than they were from the start) and how incredibly often these two categories of people were the same crowd. Later we found a mutual ground to latch on even more things to; we’re both burdened with an overabundance of inspiration and creativity. While he is without a doubt the more talented of us two, we discovered that we shared similar tastes in books, movies, graphic novels, music… and just about anything else that has been made from people with passion in their hearts.

These three people have been in their own special ways integral for my survival and my development as an individual. Erik has always been there, sort of a safety net to catch me when I fall too far (and his mother should by virtue of sheer influence in my life be mentioned: She’s probably raised me at least as much as my actual parents have. Thank you Birgitta, for everything.). Anders has poked and prodded me into doing things I fear in the social spectrum (probably without knowing it most of the time), and through him I’ve grown into the socially acceptable dolt I am today. Robert has been a huge influence on me creatively. He’s pushed me to develop as both a sketch artist, a photographer and possibly most of all as a writer. He is to thank for my continued ventures into the world of the written word – and he is also one of the few people I know that I actually dare show things to when I’m not sure they are up to par.

If I were to up and die today, I’d want them to know how much they matter to me and how much they’ve influenced me. I might not be perfect, I might not even be very good… but who I am today is what they made me. From the bottom of my black and shriveled heart, thank you.